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As you work to improve and expand your search marketing efforts, you may run into a need to optimize your local search presence. Some eCommerce retailers also have brick-and-mortar stores that require as much attention as their online counterparts. But, improving your local online presence can be tricky, especially if you’re splitting your time between your physical location and your eCommerce site.

A site that’s well-optimized for local search can be the difference between getting more local customers through your door, and struggling for visits. As important as your eCommerce site is to your business, your local exposure is just as imperative to success, and building a real brand. We’ll explore some important things to do when optimizing your local search presence.

Optimize Your Site Elements

Getting the technical basics in order for your site is the first, and most logical, step when beginning to optimize your site for local search. Here, you need to make sure your site reflects your location in every way it can. These elements allow the search engines to make better associations between your business and your location, and better present your site to users in your local area.

First, it’s important to make sure your title tags, meta descriptions, and head tags are optimized based on your location. If you have location-specific landing pages, your title elements should reflect that. Elements like title tags and meta descriptions are how users decide to click through to your site from the SERPs (search engine results pages.) If you add geo-targeted keywords to these page elements, you are increasing your chances of attracting local customers to your landing pages. Even more, you are helping the search engines display your content on local search results.

Also, don’t forget to include these location-specific keywords in your on-page content. People often spend so much time getting their page elements just right for local search, that they overlook their on-page content. Using these geo-targeted keywords, in a natural way of course, on your pages can help to reaffirm your local status.

Get Local With Social

If you haven’t already claimed your spot on Google+ Local, this is your first step. Google+ Local is a great service that allows you to list your local business and create a Google+ page from that listing. This step is so important because Google tends to use this information in local search results. They pull things like your address, hours, services, etc. to populate local search results and map results. If you don’t appear in Google+ Local, you’re letting your competitors who do, get ahead of you.

But remember, you must choose your page type very carefully on Google+ Local. This service is only suited for (but not limited to) actual brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants, entertainment spaces, or offices that are open to the public. Google+ Local, and any local service, should not be “gamed.” If you try to manipulate any of these local services for gains in rankings or visibility, you will lose the ground you’re trying to gain.

After Google+ Local, you want to make sure your business’s Facebook page reflects your local status as well. This way, users can check-in with your business via their Facebook accounts. Also, meeting Facebook’s local requirements gives users the ability to leave reviews on your Facebook page – another valuable tool for local marketing!

In all, you want to make sure all of your social accounts reflect the information of your brick-and mortar store. Things like your address, local phone number, and hours of operation need to appear wherever they can in your “About” sections. Remember, adding some geo-targeted keywords into your business descriptions can help users, and search engines, make those valuable associations between your online business and your physical location.

Get Listed

Next, it’s important to pick some high-quality local directories to submit your business information to. Again, these are only for businesses that have actual, real locations that are open to the public. If you have an office building where you meet clients by appointment only, you need to specify that. It is important to pick and choose your local listings carefully – you need to stay in line with the search engines’ quality guidelines when listing your business in directories.

After you’ve decided how to best represent your business in local directories, you need to pick the services that are best for you. Sites like Yelp, SuperPages, HotFrog, YellowPages, etc. allow you to add listings, usually for free. Even more, you can explore sites that are location-specific. Maybe your town or regional area has special listing sites. These are great to join to build relationships with your community.

Oftentimes, people can become overwhelmed with all of the listing sites they want to submit their business information to. This is where automated services can come in handy. These services usually require a monthly fee to submit and maintain your business listings for you. These are a great option if your hours change a lot, or your store tends to relocate. If you are interested in one of these automated services, you want to make sure you are picking a respected, legitimate service that submits to legitimate listing sites. We recommend services like Yext or Moz Local in this case.

Rave Ratings

Ratings are one of the most important, and impactful, aspects to local search visibility. How many times have you heard about a store or restaurant that has poor customer service? Do these reviews keep you from visiting those businesses? This is the power of online reviews. As much as a bad word-of-mouth review from your friend can affect your perception of a business, online reviews are much more powerful. These reviews are available to any searcher, sometimes even showing up with your search result. Reviews, good or bad, can seal the deal on a potential customer’s decision to visit you or not.

You want to try to encourage customers to leave reviews and/or ratings on your Facebook page, Google+ Local page, Yelp, etc. Ratings help to increase trust with other customers. A potential customer is much more likely to listen to another consumer like themselves, above any self-promotion you can do. Even more, the search engines tend to pay attention to your ratings as well. Thankfully, if customers are truly delighted by their experiences, they may feel compelled to write a good review. There is another, more powerful side to experiences though. Unfortunately, customers are more like to write a negative review after a bad experience than a positive one after a good experience.

Here, you need to make sure your customer service is exceptional. Sometimes, business owners simply can’t help to improve a cranky customer’s perception of their service or products. This is an unfortunate realty of providing a service. But, even poor reviews can work in your favor. These give you another opportunity to remedy the unhappy situation that customer may have experienced. Responding to an unhappy review with all intentions to fix the situation can only help you – other customers will see your commitment and effort to make shoppers happy.

Alternately, you should never, ever pay for reviews. There’s nothing wrong with giving an incentive to review your business or service. Something like a small coupon for their next purchase or a free shipping for your eCommerce site. But, there should never be an exchange of money for a review. This directly violates the search engines’ best practices. Hopefully, you and your employees are doing a great job, and your customers will want to talk about it on their own.

If you have both an eCommerce site and a brick-and-mortar store, your presence in local search is important to your bottom-line. By making some small changes to your page elements, on-page content, and social profiles, you can increase your visibility in local search results. Geo-targeted keywords work together with good local business listings and reviews for results. All of these elements allow you to be more visible, more trusted, and more of an authority for your local industry. Stick to local search best practices, keep providing great service, and you’ll see local gains.